Pavel Tuzov

When One Door Closes

As I was writing my resolution for 2017, I put accent on traveling. We have a nice plastic calendar, where one can write with a marker and easily wipe it, if need be. You have an immediate overview of the entire year, which makes this process of planning not only easier but also, somehow, exciting.

In the beginning of the year, the calendar was already filled with destinations. As I booked two trips and was ready to book a third one, I realised that my passport was to be expired before summer even begins. Then I found out that I am missing some document needed for the new passport and getting it was very problematic and would last a couple of months.

I have this document now, but I didn’t yet even request the new passport, as getting an appointment was also not as easy as expected.

This is how my plans where literally wiped out from the calendar.

But as it is often the case, when one door closes, another opens. Having no passport, I started planning a road trip through Germany and, as a result, we will mostly be hiking through those beautiful mountains in south for two weeks.

The thing is, there is little chance that I would plan two weeks in Alps and Black Forest if I had a passport. Because if you take two weeks off, you tend to travel somewhere far and you can always drive to Bavaria in an extended weekend. But who am I kidding? After 4 years living here, I was only once in Alps and promised myself back then that I will be coming back. And if I got my new passport before this one expired and sticked to my initial plan from the plastic calendar, who knows when I would be coming back to look at the Neuschwanstein Castle from the Marienbrücke again, as I so much wished to do in a summer.